What's that funny noise?
/Seismic reflections are strange noises. Around 50 Hz, narrow band, very quiet, and difficult to interpret. It is possible to convert seismic traces (active or passive) into audible sound with a shift in pitch and a time stretch.
Curiously the audification thing has never really caught on in exploration geophysics — a bit surprising, given the fascination with spectral decomposition over the last 15 years or so. And especially so when you consider that our hearing has a dynamic range of about 100 dB, which is comparable to, indeed slightly greater than, our vision (about 90 dB).
Paolo Dell'Aversana of ENI wants to change that. Rather than listening to 'raw' seismic, he's sending it to a MIDI interface and listening to it as a piano roll. Just try to imagine playing seismic on a piano for a second, then listen to his weird and wonderful results — at 9:45 in this EAGE video:
On the subject of weird sounds, one of my favourite Wikipedia pages is List of unexplained sounds. I especially love the eerie recordings of mysterious underwater noises, like this one called Upsweep:
No-one knows what makes that noise! My money's on a volcanic vent, but that doesn't explain the seasonality. Maybe we should do a hackathon on these unexaplained sounds some time. If you know of any others — I'd love tohear about them.
If you enjoy strange infrasound as much as I do, I recommend following these two scientists on Twitter:
Milton Garces, aka Infrasound Hunter and director of the Infrasound LAb at the University of Hawaii.
Stephen Gibbons, NORSAR seismologist who monitors nuclear testing with seismology.
If you really like strange noises, don't forget to check out the Undersampled Radio podcast!